India Doggies

I swore I would avoid all animals in India, due to the alarming amount of rabies (go read about rabies. It's terrifying. Like some made-up sci-fi disease, you go insane before you die), but the dogs in India, woo, it's hard. This is one major untapped resource, the dogs here are awesome. If any of them were in a kennel in Toronto they'd be adopted the same day. They're all the right size, they're pretty, they're really well behaved because they get the shit beat out of them if they do anything wrong. One fat little black and white dog thought I was going to give her some food and so desperately wanted to jump up on me, but just pressed her nose against my thigh and did a silly little doggy dance instead.

On the beaches there are tons of puppies being carted around like babies by young hippie children, all hand-fed and wearing homemade collars. I can just imagine the scene when it's time to go home. Not surprisingly all the dogs love you and will sit by your feet and follow you everywhere.

At the train station on the way out we met the worlds smartest dog, he came up behind me when I was sitting on a bench so I patted him on the head and turned around, so he walks in front and starts rubbing his head against the bottom of my foot and then rests his chin on my knee. No one taught him any doggie parlour tricks, he just figured out the best way to sucker white tourists. We named him Plato.

I can only imagine the red tape it would be to get a street dog into Canada, but I'm starting to think it could potentially be worth the hassle. It's the new postcard, mangy doggies!

I am having fun, I swear

I was taking to Mom over skype last night and apparently the blog makes it sound like I am all surly and upset, so clearing the air, I am having a good time. We're heading to Munnar to wander around tea plantations and find some spice farms. There are some nice people here, and men holding hands will never stop being awesome. Especially when it's two cops holding batons with their other hands.

I think I'm just a bit disappointed in how things have changed in India, I wasn't expecting it to be exactly like it was when we lived here, but also wasn't prepared for the difference. For example, Mom doesn't remember any touts or people trying to sell you junk while touring Rajasthan in 86. It is the only thing I remember from touring Rajasthan in 09. It would be another thing if there were good changes as well, but there's still heavy corruption, no sanitation, all of that, and they've just added more people, more traffic, and the tourists have made everyone surly and expecting money. It's that 'Lonely Planet' effect, where as soon as it's written down that a place is good, it instantly becomes not good. As usual, I blame everybody else. Though I think the german guy who was completely wasted at 10 in the morning, burning a pile of his clothes and garbage in front of the restaurant while trying to start fights with the locals, completely deserves my scorn.

Om Beach in Gokarna

That is where we were. We have now moved one beach north, we're renting a hut for 2.50 a night and this one has a concrete floor! What an upgrade. Derek bought us tickets for a night train heading south tomorrow and has told me to figure out what we should do when we get there. More of the same, I imagine. We were lucky to meet up with another traveler (hi Dan) to hang out with for a while. Three months is a long time to hang out with just one person. I asked Derek what we'll be doing when we get back and he just stares at me. Probably not a good sign.

We're both looking forward to going home. I don't know how someone could travel around India for one or two years, hell, even the four months we had originally planned. There's just not that much going on here. It's kind of boring. Can someone keep an interest in temples for that long? Maybe if they were all rat temples.

There are herds of local men on the beaches that wander around asking women in bikinis if they can get a photo with them (there is actually a large sign before the beach telling men not to do that. I am serious), something that happens everywhere here and confuses me. What are you going to do with all these photos of yourself with some white lady you'll never meet again? Are they telling people they slept with her? I can't imagine any other purpose so it always really creeps me out when they ask, though thankfully due to the scantily clad young women here who seem to have missed the cultural sensitivity memo they've been leaving me alone. Except that time I was walking to the hut and a group of about 8 guys stopped and slowly turned to watch as I walked by. I'm wearing a shirt and long board shorts into the water, what the fuck am I supposed to do. It's probably a good thing they keep the beaches so clean, I couldn't find a rock to throw at them and so I flipped them the bird and stormed off.

I'd be really interested in reading some sociology studies on this kind of behavior. What can be done to prevent it, mainly. There are plenty of other patriarchal societies where men aren't so freaking creepy, what's happening here that's so different? I keep thinking about how in Paris I got stuck in a turnstile on the subway with my large bag and a group of men materialized out of nowhere, lifted me and my luggage over, and then disappeared again. If I got stuck in a turnstile in India a group of men would appear out of nowhere and stick their hands up my shirt.

A Beach!

We're on a beach! I'm blanking on the name of the beach, we're just south of Goa. The beaches of Goa, or should I say A beach in Goa, because I only bothered to check out one beach, was gross and sucky. They were burning a pile of plastic right on the sand, the food sucked, lots of drunk pasty white people wearing no clothes and driving scooters into ditches. I took a look around and told Derek we should leave. I think we've been at this enough to know that if a place sucks you can pick up and try somewhere else. He thought we should at least give it some effort, but I was all TTHPTTH and went back to the cottage and slept it out.

This beach is much nicer. I'm not sure when we'll leave, it is so nice. The water is murky, but the waves are awesome, and the food is good. Lots of cows and fat puppies and nice hippies. We're staying in a hut on the sand that has no real floor so there is sand in everything we own. The shower is less of a shower and more of a bucket of water behind a wall.

We've been wandering around a bit and getting knocked over by waves. Derek is especially good at get tumbled about. I look over and all I can see is a foot and part of an elbow. I mainly excell at having my clothes ripped off. Managed to get my top back on before anyone saw, completely not noticing that my shorts had come undone. Hello India!

There's a festival in town in a few days that might be fun, hopefully some photos soon.

Travellers Lament

So, I've been thinking that I am not so good at backpacking. Every place we visit is either really meh (or downright UHG), or else we find out about a bunch of cool things right after we book tickets to leave. After almost three months, things have gotten somewhat monotonous. It's the same trying to track down decent food, trying to find a decent place to stay, trying to follow a map, trying to avoid touts. All the ruins and temples have blended together in my mind. I'm not really sure how to spice things up. I'm not unhappy or complaining here, just hoping if there is something to figure out, that I do so before we leave.

I'm starting to suspect that most backpackers are liars. It's like asking someone if they're good in bed, no one's going to admit how awful they are. Also mainly they appear to be interested in getting wasted. Backpacking might just be one of those things, like night clubs and office meetings, that are far more entertaining after tossing a few back.

We watched 'The Beach' at a restaurant last night, a surprisingly worse movie then I remember, which is all about creating this secret place only a few people know about on a tropical island. They go on about how much better it is then the mainland resorts but... it's the exact same as the mainland resorts. Just secret and hard to get to. One scene has the lead character sitting on a beach looking at the partiers dancing around on the sand and listening to techno, all badmouthing it and wanting to go back. And then later everyone's back at The Beach.. dancing around in the sand and listening to techno. I think this really says more about backpacking then the movie gets into.

Next time I go travelling I'm going to turn it into an art retreat and bring materials to sit around and draw ruins and people. At first I thought, what's the point, I can do that at home, but then, people can get drunk at home. Maybe that's the point of travelling. Also the food here is better.

Mumbai

We've been in Mumbai for five days now, catching a train to Goa tomorrow night, and it's been very nice. Mumbai is a good city. They have sidewalks here. I never realized how much I loved sidewalks. The people are much more relaxed and less scammy then they were in the first few weeks of our trip. We have since discovered that the northern part we were in , Rajasthan, is known for being hard to travel and full of jerks. WHO KNEW. I DO. NOW. Jesus. I doubt I will ever go back to Rajasthan (motto: We don't like you, but we love your money!). I'm not really sure what the thought process is with people who really want tourists to come, but then treat them like crap. There's been a drought there for the last decade or so, I imagine that a lot of the suckiness of the place is from people being desperate. With the climate turning into what it is, things are probably going to get worse.

I've read several travel blogs written by people traveling from south to north that talk of how much nicer the south was, which I was very relieved to hear, as well as running into other tourists that echo the same. An old man from South Africa today told us his son had been traveling around India for two months and had told him to stick to the south. I wish I'd known all this before, we could have halved our time in Rajasthan, as well as feeling less I HATE THIS PLACE knowing it would get better.

Goa, being the beach resort it is, is probably going to be more scammy then other areas, but at least there won't be the lack of humidity destroying my delicate nasal passages.

SCIENCE

This is from one of the Hindi books Derek bought. He's being learning himself the Sanskrit alphabet and is getting quite good at it, was able to spell out our waiter's name in Udaipur. Yesterday was his birthday (Derek, not the waiter) and I bought him NOTHING. I feel bad. He bought himself a pocket knife and a shirt. I could have bought him a pocket knife and a shirt, but I am far too dense to pick up obvious signals. Happy birthday Derek!

Monkey Temple

MONKEYS!

We got to go to the Monkey temple outside of Jaipur on a festival day (two weeks ago), so the locals were all there celebrating and handing nuts, dried chickpeas, carrots, and bananas to the monkeys. We didn't hand out any food. For one, we are afraid of rabies, but also there was so much food the monkeys were just sitting around looking bloated.

They have this crazy belief here that holy water is always clean and it's good to bathe in. This water was putrid. Beyond disgusting. I can only imagine the wealth of the local dermatologists.

Apparently when it's really hot in the summer the monkeys will climb up the walls of the temple and cannonball into the small pools near the top. We always come to these attractions at the wrong times.

That is a fully grown cow with tiny little legs. I've seen a couple of these. There was also a cow with a third ear growing out of his neck, but there was a guy trying to make money off of it and I'm tired of trying to bargain with people who think I am made from solid gold.

Our driver gave us bhindi dots when we got in, and then little old ladies chased us around trying to add to it. I'm so used to people trying to scam me that I just bolt whenever someone tries to make eye contact, but one of them caught Derek and was apparently just wanting to give us a little more colour.

Back in Toronto

I keep having people ask me when we'll be back in TO, so I'm putting plans here for reference. We have to be back for a wedding at the end of March, but I'm leaving again right after that, possibly for South America. Plans are sketchy. I'll be spending some time in Calgary after that. Derek doesn't know what he's doing, might come with me, might go off somewhere else, might stay in TO. But I won't be back in TO until at the earliest mid-May, maybe later.

You'll know when I'm back because I'll be very broke and sleeping on your couch.

Amber fort and Jaipur

This was a few weeks ago (I'm a bit behind), but we took an elephant up the path to the Amber Fort (just outside Jaipur). It was included with our tour, otherwise I'm not sure we would have done it. We're cheap. Also I doubt India's ability to take care of animals in a manner that does not cause me to flinch, which is what we did every time our elephant driver smacked the poor old slow elephant in front of us trying to get him to move faster. The poor guy has a sore on his backside from all the beatings. He was a 70 year old elephant! STOP BEATING HIM. When we got off the driver tried to talk us into giving him a tip, but we just jumped down the stairs and ran away. Later we had to hide a behind a wall going back down so he wouldn't see us. We're very Canadian...

The fort was alright, very full of little passage ways and stairs. It's been very heavily renovated, I doubt it originally has light switches in every room. They aren't really into "authentic" here. I would have enjoyed it a lot more, but I was grumpy. I am usually grumpy. Poor Derek.

There's an awesome old theater in Jaipur that is apparently well known, so we caught a Bollywood movie there. It wasn't in English, but Bollywood movies tend to be very simple with formulaic plots and lot of music, so it didn't matter. They're also very long, three hours, but they do give you an intermission.


It was gorgeous inside, like a really fancy cruise boat. The ceiling in the theatre was heavily decorated with long flowing scalloped ceiling carving things (I have a BFA! woo). Everyone chats, cheers, whistles, answers cellphones, does whatever throughout the movie. It's a much better movie experience. If I want to sit in a dark room and not move or make any noise, I don't need to pay 20 bucks. It's a large part about why I never want to watch movies back home, I'm just too ADD for that.

Our driver came with us, and I have to say, he is the worst translator ever. For the most part the movie was really obvious about what was going on, but whenever we were confused and asked him what just happened he'd be like "they are mad". Yes... I can see that, but WHY. We saw Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (A Match Made by God), thankfully the wiki article cleared things up. It was good, I would recommend it is you are interested in Bollywood movies. I've seen a few others and they were unwatchable with shockingly bad music. Like cheap Saturday morning cartoon level of quality.

I'll have one of each, please.

Not sure what's going on here, but pretty certain it's illegal.

Bikaner - Rat Temple

We stopped at the Jain Rat Temple outside of Bikaner, as was mentioned. I was really looking forward to this. Love the ratties. It was, as Derek said, both a dissapointment and totally awesome.

To be honest, I was expecting more rats. A carpet of writhing animals. I guess they're nocturnal or something. I did have one run across my foot when we stepped inside, which is supposed to be good luck, but probably isn't when you are startled and accidently kick it a few feet. Whoops.

They had laid out food (mainly sweets) and bowls of milk. We had to leave any leather items in the car, Jainism is very pro-animal. If you accidently kill a rat you have to buy a small gold statue of one to appease the temple. Also, ka-ching.

Apparently if you see a white rat it's good luck. We saw no white rats. If we ever come back I'll bring a box of them and set them loose. People can always use more luck.